“Look! I married you a certain way! I like women who look a certain way! It’s my right to like women who look a certain way and I shouldn’t have to spend the rest of my life not being happy,” Brad exclaimed.

The retort from my friend Jasmine’s husband was a reaction to her staunch refusal to get ‘another set’ less than two months after removing the implants that nearly cost her her life. For nearly a decade Jasmine endured numerous health complications that Western doctors claimed had nothing to do with her silicone breast implants.

Brad seemed different from her last fiance, which is why Jasmine married him. He seemed open-minded, kind, forgiving, gentle, nurturing, and accepting. When she sprouted a few stray gray hairs in her late twenties he urged her not to pluck them saying he loved her “wisdom hairs.”

Tim, her boyfriend a decade earlier, told her she was perfect and the “girl of his dreams.” Well, almost. She was the girl of his dreams except her breasts were too small and she’d be perfect if they were bigger. In fact he’d marry her if she’d consider breast enlargement surgery. Within a week Jasmine, then 18 years old in 1990, found herself under the knife. When she woke up the static and lifeless silicone orbs on her chest were much larger than what she had agreed to during the initial consultation. The consultation that came within days of her halfheartedly agreeing to consider them.

Jasmine was genetically tiny and naturally beautiful by today’s standard. Now she embodied the girl on the back of a trucker’s mudflap. Tim’s version of the perfect wife. As promised, they were quickly engaged and twenty-five-year-old Tim, the ‘hot guy’ in town, paraded her around like a trophy–until she had the courage to leave him for being emotionally abusive and controlling.

Looking Pretty Versus Feeling Beautiful

Yoga, a derivative of yuj which means “to bind or yoke”, is a holistic system that addresses the whole person- physically, mentally, emotionally and energetically. Ultimately, the intention of yoga is to unify body and mind. This stands in stark contrast to our Greco-Roman tradition that values the power of the intellect over the inherent wisdom of the body. The result is what is referred to as the mind-body split. Susan Bordo describes this duality in her book, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body,p. 144:

I will begin with the most general and attenuated axis of continuity, the one that begins with Plato, winds its way to its most lurid expression in Augustine, and finally becomes metaphysically solidified and scientized by Descartes. I am referring, of course, to our dualistic heritage: the view that human existence is bifurcated into two realms of substances: the bodily or material, on the one hand; the mental or spiritual, on the other.

Not only has our total being been split into the mind, or intellect and the body, or material, but they’ve been ranked in a hierarchy. Of these two planes, the mind has been, and continues to be, more highly valued than the body, a realm deemed synonymous with the “unpredictable” and “dangerous” realm of nature and the feminine. In addition to the devalue of the physical body, the intellect has been placed in charge of controlling the body. In essence, enforcing the will of the intellect and trampling over the body’s innate ability to communicate.

How does the body communicate? Through feeling or sensation, of course.

According to Deborah Tolman, a professor at Hunter College, who studies teenage girl’s desire,”They respond to questions about how their bodies feel-questions about sexuality or arousal-by describing how they think they look. I have to remind them that looking good is not a feeling.

As I pointed out in How Yoga Makes You Pretty- Part I, according to veteran yoga teacher, Bryan Kest, everyone wants to look pretty, or look good according to a culturally constructed and myopic standard, in order to feel good. But as Orenstein and Tolman detail, pretty is not a feeling. Pretty is an outward aesthetic based on an elusive and ephemeral ideal.

The Wisdom of Bryan Kest and The Beauty Myth

This post is the first post in an ongoing series, The Wisdom of Bryan Kest. This series seeks to chronicle what I have learned in my yoga practice with Bryan Kest since 1997.

We’ve been told that “pretty” is the magical elixir for everything that ails us. If we’re pretty we’re bound to be happier than people who aren’t pretty. If we’re pretty, we’ll never be lonely; we’ll have more Facebook friend requests; we’ll go on more dates; we’ll find true love (or just get laid more often); we’ll be popular. If we’re pretty, we’ll be successful; we’ll get a better job; we’ll get rewarded with countless promotions; our paychecks will be bigger. In short, “pretty,” something Naomi Wolf refers to as a form of cultural currency in the feminist classic The Beauty Myth, will buy us love, power and influence. And, in the end, “pretty” will make us feel good.

And who doesn’t want to feel good?

The media juggernaut that actively shapes our 21st century cultural environment sells us this promise and perpetuates this myth beginning in childhood. The assault continues as we move through adolescence and adulthood, meeting our gaze at every turn through fashion, television, film, music, and advertising. These images and messages are practically inescapable, even in yoga publications, and the peddled products entice us using sleek, sculpted models and celebrities in computer retouched photos. Advertising is specifically designed to appeal to our emotions and shape desire thereby constructing cultural values, identities and lifestyles in order to sell a gamut of products and services from beer, luxury cars and designer shoes to yoga mats, DVDs and diet pills. Ultimately, we’re spoon fed streams of unrealistic images in a virtual onslaught that tells women, and increasingly men, that the most valuable thing we can aspire to be is, well, pretty.

And the tantalizing promises of a better, prettier, you are absolutely everywhere. The idea that we can simply “turn off” or “ignore” these messages is narrow in scope and short sighted. Unless you’re living under a rock-wait, make that a hermetically sealed bubble- you are affected in one way or another and so are those around you. Unfortunately, we’re being sold a superficial bill of goods that doesn’t give us the complete picture.

“Everybody wants to be pretty because that’s what they’ve been told will make them feel good even though there’s no proof that people who are prettier are healthier and happier. So why don’t we just cut to the chase and go straight to what makes us feel good?”

Kest circumvents the chatter and speaks truth in simple terms accessible to virtually everyone. He is consistently “prodding and poking” his students by exposing the absolute lunacy of our increasingly and ubiquitous media culture . He challenges students, including myself, to confront the demands of our egos. He challenges us to do the work of doing raising our consciousness. Ultimately, Kest assists us in untangling our psychic, emotional and physical knots.

When we practice yoga, we feel good even if the journey through a particular practice is emotionally and physically arduous and confronting, as it usually is. As Kest, who has been practicing yoga for over three decades, says, ” I don’t like yoga. Who likes yoga? But I appreciate yoga and the way it makes me feel.”

There is no denying the sense of mental and physical lightness, openness and freedom one feels after after quieting the mind, gazing inward and moving through the body in a sensitive, conscious and loving way. Yoga is a moving meditation and, as many studies have revealedtime and time again, meditation makes you feel good. Competition, a fundamental national value, that characterizes most of our encounters in the workplace, within our families, among our peers and ourselves is not a part of mature and healthy yoga practice. Essentially, you’re bound to cultivate inner peace and feel fantastic practicing yoga if you’re able to let go.

The only time you probably won’t feel good is if you carry your baggage into your practice, strengthening and honing external stressors. As Kest says, in his usual elegant Kest fashion, “If you bring your shit into yoga, you turn your yoga into shit.” As with anything else, how you use a tool makes all the difference. After all, you can use a knife to butter your toast or stab someone.

Yoga is a pathway to cultivate self-love allowing us to shift our sense of validation inward, as opposed to the standard practice of measuring one’s worth based on external definitions. In fact the cultural validation we are encouraged to seek often fans the flames of further discontent since we can never be thin enough, muscular enough, wealthy enough or pretty enough by mainstream standards. Even if we are a waify size-zero, a bulked up mass of muscles, a millionaire or a picture-perfect model, happiness isn’t a guarantee. There are plenty of depressed, disgruntled, unsatisfied “pretty people” with low self-esteem and we know that a slim body with a pretty face isn’t necessarily a healthy body, mentally or physically. In fact, in my own work as a body image activist, many of the most “beautiful” women I’ve met have had some of the most dysfunctional and unhealthy relationships with their body. Too often this has been marked by eating disorders, disordered eating and dangerous beauty rituals to maintain the outward facade. In the end, there isn’t a direct correlation between being pretty and being happy and/or healthy. Pretty hasn’t delivered and what has been defined as pretty isn’t even real or sustainable.

Remember, Naomi Wolf called it the beauty myth for a reason.

Barbie mural photograph taken by the author at Fred Segal Salon in Santa Monica, CA.

July 22, 2010

over it by Liz Acosta

Artist statement:

An ephemeral drawing is one that is created to be destroyed. It addresses the relationships between medium, subject, and significance.

over it is the documentation of an ephemeral art piece that talks about overcoming disordered eating through the creation and consumption of a cake with a scale drawn on it with icing. Though its narrative is deeply personal, the experience is nearly universal in our image-obsessed culture with its narrow standards of feminine beauty.

Liz Acosta is a photographer, writer, artist, cyclist, and activist in Los Angeles. With a degree from the University of Southern California, her work is primarily focused on questions of the body and its relationship to gender, sexuality, and performance. She blogs at www.happyland2007.com and will be joining the Feminist Fatale family as a blogger in the near future.

Today we’re inundated with images of a false reality that concentrate on one ideal form of beauty. Altering images via Photoshop, ultimately exposes us to millions of images are not “real.” Our project takes a look at the dangers of the media, from Photoshopping to white-washing to an emphasis on an unattainable perfection. Collectively, the images in the media do not represent the diversity found in the larger population; not all women are tall, thin, white, heterosexual or young. And in real life, nobody is Photoshopped. Where are representations of “real” women?

Having struggled with our own body image issues and eating disorders, we know first hand the amount of pressure the media can exert on women and the psychological and physical costs. We wanted to address the serious nature of these issues and focus on the importance of a healthy body image.

Part of our video was inspired by our in-class project, the body collage that covered two walls from floor to ceiling with images of women in the print media. We were shocked to see the onslaught of these homogeneous all at once. This experience inspired our project as well as the Feminist Majority Foundation campaign, “This is what a feminist looks like.” Ultimately, our statement “this is what a real woman looks like” is a reaction to the exclusion of women in the mass media and the erasing of age, race and authenticity as a result of the standard industry practice of altering women that already reflect an incredibly small percentage of the population.

The video is a mosaic of our own stories; our struggles with our own body image, our relationship with our bodies and our message of self-love and acceptance.

So plenty of criticism has been thrown Victoria’s Secret way in the past few years. They’ve been criticized for advertising that seems to be made for men instead of their female customers, stealing, and sometimes going overboard with photoshop, but what bothers me the most is their new ad campaign. (more…)

February 11, 2010

There’s been lost of buzz about Heidi Montag’s overhaul (what she calls her transformation from ugly duckling to her “best me”) in the last month. Most of the press has been negative and the reactions have ranged from anger to horror. Many women, specifically, are angry that she has “sold out” and made things “that much harder” for other women. Others are horrified by the extreme measures she has taken to achieve a warped and industry-influenced perception of beautiful. She claims her mother looked at her like a “circus freak.”

A similar thought came to mind when I saw the photographs of her newly sculpted body and face (that she had the means to purchase-hello-expensive). It’s the same reaction I get when I see pictures of Pamela Anderson. Eww. What a freak.

But, Pamela Anderson used to the epitome of beauty to me. I cringe as I admit that. I used to fake-n-bake when I couldn’t get to the beach and smear accelerator on my crying skin (after all, it was the early 90s), I bleached my hair for years, and wore acrylics for far too long.

I don’t think I was the only one. I know I wasn’t the only one. And I know Heidi isn’t the only one these days.

I realize Heidi is a celebrity wanna be, a media monger with scant talent. I realize that her beach work outs, wedding and, probably even this plastic surgery story, are calculated PR attempts however lame they may be.

But I have empathy for Heidi and I don’t think she’s as much of a freak show as we make her out to be. Yeah, she had 10 procedures in a day. Yes, she almost died. But Heidi is not the only one supporting Dr. Ryan or the countless other plastic surgeons paying their bloated mortgages in swanky neighborhoods on the insecurities of wealthy women and women with mountains of debt (and men..yes, I know about the men). Shoot, I know people who have gone to Dr. Ryan for countless procedures with the desire for more.

What strikes me about Heidi Montag is that her desire for an unrealistic image of perfection has become more and more normative. Walking through parts of Los Angeles, I tend to see the same face over and over. I remember being slightly drunk at a Beverly Hills establishment some years ago and asking, “why do all these women have the same face?” In my state of intoxication it was like some bizarre carnival side show.

But it isn’t a bizarre carnival side show. It is increasingly becoming the norm. And not just in LA. Across the country. Across the globe. It’s an anthropological curiosity.

The outcries of horror and claims of freak come from the fact that she has candidly shared the gruesome, life threatening means required to achieve this notion of “beauty.” Almost innocently and surprised, she said that this is what it takes to be noticed and profitable in the industry. That’s what freakish because it is sadly true.

The fact that women (and men) *choose* (this is a point of debate) to pay to go under the knife and possibly experience complications or die in an attempt to look like a gazillion other women is ludicrous. And freaky. But that is exactly what is happening all the time to more and more women at younger and younger ages.

But most women don’t talk about the extreme measures and boat loads of money it takes to pursue this illusory beauty ideal. If more women gave honest accounts of their torturous beauty regimens we’d realize that Heidi isn’t a freak but the canary in the coal mine alerting us of dangers as more and more of our women, young and old, elect to construct and manufacture their faces and frames.

But, how often do we personally think about what we spend and the amount of time it takes us to get ready? I’m not considered “high-maintenance” and, even so, I spend a tremendous amount of time and energy on my physical appearance:

It’s sobering to write it out. As I said, it doesn’t take me hours to get ready, I don’t look like a woman that takes hours to get ready, my hair is not perfectly coiffed and groomed, I am not “flawless,” and don’t look like anyone featured in the media.

Sociological Images provides the link to a slide show of women photographed during their monthly beauty routine and calculates the costs associated with it.

How much do you spend each month on diet, exercise, make-up, hair, scents and oils, and/or plastic surgery or various enhancements such as Botox, teeth whitening, photofacials and/or laser treatments? How many products do you have in your bathroom that you haven’t used completely before buying another brand name?

Miss California’s Carrie Prejean is generating more commentary. Following her statement that she was tempted by the devil when asked about gay marriage, the question asked by Sheldon Filger is: how does God feel about breast implants. Never mind the fact that these were implants funded by the pageant to boost self-esteem. I guess God’s version weren’t good enough. Hmmmm.

Maybe I’m just Miss California dreaming, but it seems to me that Carrie Prejean is afflicted with a terminal case of breast envy. Just as some men may feel inadequate if they perceive a certain part of their anatomy doesn’t “measure up,” it could be that the actions, thoughts and words of the 21 year old beauty queen and runner up at the Miss USA pageant are merely a disguise for her own sense of not “measuring up” to her beauty queen peers in the natural state God endowed her with.

There is a reason why I inserted God into this narrative. The whole premise of Ms. Prejean’s political antics has been predicated on the claim that she is a devout, Bible-believing Christian woman and her outspoken posture on the issue of same sex-marriage is an act of pious conscience. Whether or not I agree with Carrie Prejean’s decision to place her celebrity persona in the service of the anti-Gay marriage organization known as the National Organization for Marriage, I could respect her decision if it was based on consistency. However, it strikes me that this devout Bible-believing Christian woman missed one verse in the Bible, no doubt unintentionally. Allow me to quote from Chapter 4, Verse 5 of the Song of Solomon: “Thy two breasts are like young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.”

If you are a conservative Christian who believes that the entire Bible, chapter and verse, is the inalterable word of God almighty, then it appears clear that God thought female breasts were quite important, or otherwise the Lord of the universe would not have bothered to reveal what is essentially an erotic ode to the bosoms of women. My interpretation of this biblical verse is that God thought breasts as they exist on each woman are beautiful, “like young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.” And for the record, young roes are somewhat on the small size.

So, it is obvious that God adores female breasts (kind of like me, or maybe it is vice versa). But more importantly, God created female breasts, along with everything else in the universe. So the essence of that verse from the Song of Solomon is that God thought his creation of the bosoms of women was perfection. Furthermore, it is a principal of conservative Christians such as Carrie Prejean that everything God created in its natural state is perfect and should never be altered, such as the institution of marriage being solely a union for a man and a woman. So Ms. Prejean, what about hiring a cosmetic surgeon to alter your breasts, and undo God’s perfect creation?

April 24, 2009

I guess I should have figured. Susan Boyle, the overnight singing sensation, who has been mocked for her comment about never beuing kissed and discussed not just for her singing talent but her “frumpy” “ordinariness” has begun a make-over. The breath of fresh air she gave many people by being authentic did not last long. Afterall, she has just passed trhough the filter of the popular culture and, most things, don’t remain the same.

Some say the overnight singing sensation who rocketed to fame after a phenomenal performance on “Britain’s Got Talent” has every right to upgrade her dowdy appearance. Others fear she may lose her authenticity _ and her amazing connection with the TV audience _ if she goes too far in the image makeover department.

The change is startling. Gone is the fusty woman with graying, frizzy hair and a jowly face who joked on air that she had never been kissed, replaced by a stylish, freshly-coiffed lady in fashionable leather jacket and what looks to be a Burberry scarf. The dark, unkempt eyebrows have been shaped and colored.

Fashion experts say she’s taken years off her looks, but should think twice about making more improvements, particularly if they go beyond styling and involve artificial enhancements.

“She looks 10 years younger,” said Toni Jones, assistant fashion editor at The Sun tabloid newspaper, which featured the new look Boyle on its cover Friday.

“Compared to what she had, it’s a 200 percent improvement. But our readers think this is as far as she should go. We want her to stay one of us.”

Jones said Boyle’s decision to dye her hair brown was causing some consternation among the powers-that-be at “Britain’s Got Talent” by stoking fears that she may no longer seem real.